Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity

Seeing the Gods

Edited by Jas' Elsner and Ian Rutherford

A pioneering collection of essays, comparing sacred travel from Greek and Roman polytheism to early Christianity

Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity

Seeing the Gods

Edited by Jas' Elsner and Ian Rutherford

Description

This book presents a range of case-studies of pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman antiquity, drawing on a wide variety of evidence. It rejects the usual reluctance to accept the category of pilgrimage in pagan polytheism and affirms the significance of sacred mobility not only as an important factor in understanding ancient religion and its topographies but also as vitally ancestral to later Christian practice.

Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity

Seeing the Gods

Edited by Jas' Elsner and Ian Rutherford

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Mapping out Communitas: Performances of Theoria in their Sacred and Political Context, Barbara Kowalzig2. Hiketai and Theoroi at Epidaurus, Fred Naiden3. Pilgrimage to the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi: Patterns of Public and Private Consultation, Michael Arnush4. Pilgrimage and Greek Religion: Sacred and Secular in the Pagan Polis, Scott Scullion5. Downstream to the Cat-Goddess: Herodotus on Egyptian Pilgrimage, Ian Rutherford6. The Philosopher at the Festival: Plato's Transformation of Traditional Theoria, Andrea Wilson-Nightingale7. The Body in Space: Visual Dynamics in Graeco-Roman Healing Pilgrimage, Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis8. Mucianus and a Touch of the Miraculous: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Roman Asia Minor,
George Williamson9. Pilgrimage as Elite Habitus: Educated Pilgrims in Sacred Landscape during the Second Sophistic, Marco Galli10. The Construction of Religious Space in Pausanias, William Hutton11. A Journey to the End of the World, Andrew Fear12. Pilgrims and Ethnographers: In Search of the Syrian Goddess, J. L. Lightfoot13. Divine and Human Feet: Records of Pilgrims Honouring Isis, Sarolta A. Takacs14. Rabbi Aqiba Comes to Rome: A Jewish Pilgrimage in Reverse, David Noy15. `Interningled until the end of time': Ambiguity as a Central Condition of Early Christian Pilgrimage, Wendy Pullan16. Piety and Passion: Contest and Consensus in Audiences for Early Christian Pilgrimage, Jas' Elsner17. Urban Shrine and Rural Saint in Fifth-Century
Alexandria, David Frankfurter